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From Yellow Dog Brewing in Port Moody in collaboration with AleSmith Brewing out of San Diego California comes their “Seeking Asylum Belgian Double IPA”. The beer pours an amber colour with a white head. The aroma consists of Belgian yeast, tropical fruit, sweetness and floral hops. The flavour is of Belgian yeast, tropical fruit, pineapple, citrus rind, low malt presence, dankness and bitterness. The alcohol content comes in at 8% with an IBU of 90. Its no surprise to me that these two breweries would come together and make an awesome Double IPA! Its probably almost gone off the market now but it was really tasty.

Commercial Description: Seeking Asylum is a 8% abv and 90 IBU Belgian-style Double IPA co-created with San Diego’s Alesmith Brewing, described as “smooth and full-bodied with a west-coast twist. Imagine a west-coast DIPA mixed with a Belgian style triple!”

It is October again and that means it was time for the 8th Annul BC Beer Awards. Once again the Beer Awards and festival were held at the Croatian Cultural Centre. This years festival landed on October 21st, 2017. The first 7 awards were held in a similar format with the festival happening at the same time as the awards with the announcements happening in the second half of the festival. This year the awards were held in a VIP hour that took place before the main doors opened.

I have been attending this event for many years now and it is one of the must attend events on the yearly calendar. I was lucky enough to be able to attend the awards portion of the event before the general public was let into the building. To me the most important part of the entire experience is the actual awards and that is one thing that I am not a big fan of with this years changes. luckily this was still an amazing event. The BC Beer Awards continue to grow every year with this having beer from 97 breweries and a total entries of 879. Last year for comparison was 83 breweries and 750 entries. The event started at 4pm for VIP’s and then opened up to the masses at 5pm. last call for the beer festival was at 9:45pm.

For the last few years Stephen Quinn of CBC Radio was the host of the awards but with a bad back he was unable to do the honors. This year Dan Burritt of CBC Radio took his place and did a wonderful job. I still hope one day 100% of the breweries will take part in this event as you never really know the best beer in the province if not everyone takes part. Lets get to the most important part, the winning beer!

CBC PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD

INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR – presented by Newlands Systems

This year had a few nice surprises with the winners. With the Best in Show being Flagship IPA from Steamworks Brewing the tides have turned a little bit towards creativity and not just following style guidelines for the BC Beer Awards. This year Boombox Brewing won CBC People’s Choice Award and Innovator of the Year went to Twin Sails Brewing. Both are very experimental breweries and leading the charge with great experimental brews. It was also amazing to see two rookie breweries win two huge awards. Brewery of the Year went to Mount Arrowsmith Brewing from the island and Rookie of the Year went to Backcountry Brewing out of Squamish.

The media got to enter at 3pm for a small media tour. Here are some photos from the media hour. The media tour was lead by Paul Pyne of DrinkSmarter.ca a Certified Cicerone and a member of the craft beer community.

Here are some of my photos of the event once it started. This year I took far less photos as I was busy recording audio for the Pacific Beer Chat episode. Here are the photos that I did take.

This year was once again an amazing year with even better beer both being served and winning awards. Here is to next years event!

Every year I hope to make it to more Vancouver Craft Beer Week events and every year my schedule gets stupid right at that time. This year I finally made it out to the big festival at the historic PNE Fairgrounds on the second day day on Sunday June 4th, 2047. This was the final day of Craft Beer Week and was a festival of epic scale covering a massive area in the PNE grounds.

The festival ran from 1pm to 6pm and hosted 100 craft breweries and cideries with over 300+ beer and cider being poured. For the full list of breweries click here. The tickets were a great value at $39.99 and included 2 drink tokens. More could be purchased for a $1.5 each. Breweries came from not only Canada but also from around the United States and I think there were some from around the world also.

The festival hosted live music also as well as a bunch of food truck options, art installations, market stalls, brewing demonstrations and a game area and barber shop.

With the festival being so spread out it never felt overly busy on the Sunday and I never had to wait more than a minute or two to get a sample of beer. I had to leave early so I don’t know if it was this the entire time but I really enjoyed the fact that I could just walk up and get a sample of any beer I wanted without waiting forever in line. I think VCBW might be onto something with this festival and I am glad that I was finally able to make it out to the PNE festival. I would always recommend going to as many events during VCBW as you can but I know not everyone is made of money. If you can only make it to one event you would not be doing yourself a disservice going to this one. Tons of different beers to try with some of the latest breweries that have opened in BC as well as breweries from out of town you may or may not have had the chance to try.

If you have not made it out to VCBW yet then you need to head to their website and bookmark it for next year!

From Bowen Island Brewing now brewed in Kamloops by Kamloops Brewing Company comes their”Artisan IPA”. The beer pours a copper colour with a beige head. The aroma consists of floral and herbal hops with a hint of caramel. The flavour is of herbal hops, caramel, brown sugar sweetness, some mild citrus and mild bitterness. The alchol content comes in at 5.5% with an IBU of 45. This IPA could use some work as its quite low on the flavour compared to most IPA’s but its a good choice on a budget for sure.

Commercial Description: This light golden IPA starts with a hoppy bitterness, followed by a medium level of maltiness and body, finishing with a refreshingly fruity grapefruit flavour.

Andina Brewing Company has now opened in the East Vancouver neighborhood as of March 1st. There is no way that you can miss the brewery either if you are driving down Powell Street!

The brewery was opened by Colombian ex-pats in Nicolas and Andres Amaya and their wives. The brewery is a blend of Canadian and Columbia aesthetics. Like so many breweries in BC their bar and the tables at all wood topped. The wood and the white walls has a nice contrast. The bar wraps all the way around 3 sides on the one side of the tasting room so you can be served beer on one side and have growlers filled on the other side. They launched with 6 tasty beer and with their South American inspired food menu that features ceviche. I was not able to try out the food when I stopped in but it looked good. The beer was all solid at opening but my favourite was the Maraca Passionfruit Black IPA. From the tasting room you can see into the kitchen and into the brewery though windows.

The brewery side of the building is cavernous. There is so much room for expansion this place is geared for success. Andina Brewing has a 23HL system. They currently have 4 – 60HL fermenters and also have one 46HL brite tank. They also have a cute little test batch system so that they can experiment with new beer recipes. Their beer are North American style beers that infuse South American ingredients to add some flair to the beer. Andrew Powers was hired as the Head Brewer from his previous job at Red Truck.

I recommend stopping in to the brewery right away to try some beer that is a little different than the norm and some tasty South American food.